Das Einzige Schöne The Only Beautiful Thing
by Onyxfang
Summary: Series of drabbles centering on Blitzwing and my OC, Maelstrom. I felt the erg to write about Blitzwing, what can I say? Beware of fluff! Lot and lots of triple-changing multi-personality fluff. And possibly some intense scenes, who knows.


**Das Einzige Schone~ The Only Beautiful Thing**

**By Onyxfang 2009**

_I'm back, back in town, and everything has changed._

_ I feel, feel let down, the faces stay the same._

_ I see, see shadows, of who we used to be. _

_When I drive, drive so slow, through this memory._

_ When we were only kids, and we were best of friends, _

_and we hoped for the best, and let go of the rest. _

_I heard, heard myself say things I take back. _

_If I could, could re-tell and make these stories last._

_ I see, see shadows of who we'll always be. _

_When I drive, drive these roads that made our memories. _

_When we were only kids, and we were best of friends, _

_and we hoped for the best, and let go of the rest. _

_The shadows and regrets, let go of the rest. _

_Everything has changed, (everything has changed) _

_the faces stay the same (faces stay the same) _

_Everything has changed, (everything has changed) _

_the faces stay the same When we were only kids, _

_and our time couldn't end, and how tall did we stand, _

_with the world in our hands. _

_And we were only kids, and we were best of friends, _

_and we hoped for the best, and let go of the rest. _

_The shadows and regrets, let go of the rest. _

_The shadows and regrets, let go of the rest._

_~Shadows and Regrets, Yellowcard, 2007_

_***_

"Magnificent."

It was the first time Maelstrom's processor could recall (after having gone over the history logs in her memory circuits) that she had ever heard Prowl commit to an observation as more than "impressive" or "fascinating" , and it made her engines warm just a little. Not that he was commenting on her, of course.

No, Prowl was nose to nose with one of the largest organics any of them had ever seen in the flesh and utterly engrossed in the encounter. Separated only by three inches of thick acrylic window, Prowl's long silvery gray face admired a gaping mouth and forty-eight conical teeth. The female orca, dubbed Shouka, seemed just as curious about the Autobot as he of her.

All in all, the Decepticon's plan had worked out nicely. With Prowl's Activation Day close at hand and the war seemingly over it had taken some, but not as much as she's expected, coaxing to convince the stoic ninjabot to take a break from his meditations and accompany her on a three day road trip down Historic Route 66 from their neighboring state of Illinois, in the bustling city of Chicago, to Los Angeles, and then just a traffic clogged jog up to Vallejo where Six Flags Discovery Kingdom was located. There were shorter drives, including going down to Sea World in Orlando but Maelstrom found the 37 hour cruise relaxing…or she would have if Bumblebee hadn't insisted on tagging along.

The 16-year-old killer whale drifted peacefully by one of the two windows of the underwater viewing area, dark eyes gleaming with curiosity. Intelligence. From underwater she seemed smaller somehow, grayish instead of sleek and oily black. A few powerful strokes of her tail propelled her around the pool, shafts of pale sunlight flickering through the greenish water and highlighting her white patches and underbelly before her movement carried her back to the window. She seemed to be studying the dark Autobot exactly as he was her.

And why not? After all in her entire existence, she had never come across anything like the Autobots, and her species was naturally given to an investigative nature. During the forty-five cycles they had lingered by the window Shouka had emitted a variety of clicks and whistles, echolocation used like Human fingers to feel and explore the curvatures and inner workings of her visitors. Some of the vocalizations were so low Maelstrom had to readjust her audio sensors to pick them up and then she felt a certain…surge of electricity, a tingling that went to her very spark. Could Shouka see that deeply into her and understand what she was seeing?

Her violet optics shifted to Prowl. She didn't have to ask if he was happy. Bliss was definable in every relaxed curve of his sleek golden trimmed structure. It reminded her of the few glimpses she had caught of him in meditation outside the sanctuary of his room. If she hadn't known better she would have guessed he was…communicating with the whale. Leave it to Prowl to be the first being on this planet to decode Cetacean language.

"Are you guys gonna stand there all day looking at that fish?"

Maelstrom sighed loudly, venting heated air through her exhaust ports. Bumblebee's high voice was like shattering glass on the tranquil moment. She turned to face the young Autobot who was piled high with souvenirs, including a ridiculously small Batman plush cowl hanging precariously off one of his small horns.

"She is a mammal, not a fish. And this is Prowl's Activation Day celebration so he may do as he wishes. The park manager was kind enough to close off this section of the exhibit for us for the rest of the day so we would not have Human sparkings crawling all over us…where's Sari?" She asked abruptly, her critical tone turning concerned and accusing.

"On the Medusa…I don't fit in the cars…" he mumbled sulkingly, tossing a plush Tweety Bird in the air and catching it deftly. Though approximately the same height, Maelstrom had no qualms about looking down on the younger bot when he acted rashly or irresponsibly.

"Then shouldn't you be waiting for her?"

"I just thought I'd check back with you guys and see if you wanted to…"

Prowl straightened up from his commune with the orca and regarded Bumblebee, half with annoyance, half with a sense of reluctant acceptance. His expression spelled out a sigh without actually uttering it, "I suppose we can accompany you to look at the other exhibits now. I was rather curious about the shark tunnel."

Bumblebee's flicker of enthusiasm melted away like heated mercury. "Great. MORE fish."

"She's a mammal," both the Decepticon (former Decepticon?) and Autobot corrected in the same crisp, irritated tone.

"Fish, mammal, whatever…" Bumblebee waved a servo dismissively, heading off with a resigned Prowl in tow.

The ninjabot paused to regard the femme bot with his visor slightly arched on one side, "Coming?"

"Shortly." She replied, watching the lone orca glide past the window again. She barely registered when Prowl inclined his head in acknowledgement and trudged after the yellow speedster. It didn't concern her too greatly to remain a while longer. Whatever profits the park owners had lost in closing off this side of the exhibit, they'd no doubt quadrupled by circulating the knowledge that Detroit's alien heroes were frequenting the establishment today. All the more reason for her to linger, she mused. Perhaps Bumblebee enjoyed being mauled for autographs, the ultimate extrovert, but as a long time introvert venturing out into crowds left Maelstrom lightheaded and shaky.

Fortunately, she was more two centuries old and even if that were young for a Cybertronian, patience was a lesson she'd learned well after a millennia of floating in the darkest reaches of space. It was easy enough to allow the Autobots to soak up all the attention and merely slip away into the shadows.

She touched a servo lightly to the glass, lost in thought. So much so that the large, soul-searching eye that paused in front of her almost gave her a jumpstart. Her optics flickered then stared deeply into that mystery-filled sensory organ. _What do you know that I don't? _She felt absurdly like asking, or perhaps, _Do you feel as I do?_

Shouka had been born Feb. 25, 1993 at Marineland, Antibes, France. Her parental units, er, parents, Sharkane and Kim II, were both Icelandic whales captured in the wild. She had two younger siblings, a brother, Inouk, born in 1999, and a sister, Wiki, born in 2001. By all accounts, a small but happy little pod.

In May of 2002, Six Flags, an amusement park organization which made its cash off offering high priced but safe electronically engineered thrills to adolescent Humans, bought Shouka, and transported her to their facility in Ohio. There for two years, a pitifully short time in a Cybertronian's life, but achingly long for most any species on this world, she was isolated in a small tank with only the company of two cousin species, bottle-nosed dolphins. Thereafter in April of 2004 the massive female organic was relocated to Six Flags Marine World in Vallejo in order to revive the killer whale shows which ended in 2000 with the death of Vigga, the last in a string of orca whales to die at Marine World.

According to her research it was the intention of Six Flags to buy a male orca, Kshamenk, from the amusement park Mundo Marino in Argentina for a mating companion.

Orcas were perceived to be highly intelligent animals, and intensely social, staying with their strongly bonded family units for the entirety of their lives. When Maelstrom had planned this trip she had considered that perhaps Prowl would take offense to seeing such a symbolic ambassador of the wild held captive, but the idea of loading three overwhelmingly heavy bots on a water going vessel meant to hold a small entourage of Humans and setting forth of an untruth worthy sea to view the animals in their own environment seemed foolhardy and dangerous. This was a far safer alternative. But she hadn't taken into account the overwhelming sensation of melancholy and sympathy seeing this beautiful animal in such a state would invoke on her spark.

It pulsed painfully with understanding. Here was a lone orca surrounded by smaller porpoises as she was a Decepticon, surrounded by Autobots, who could, like the dolphins, give some amount of company, of reassurance, but never understand her in entirety. It wasn't a species barrier as much as a programming barrier she had thus far been unable to overcome.

And at the moment she felt it more keenly than she had in over a stellar cycle, since the Autobots had pulled her Earth fallen wreckage from the remains of an old smoldering warehouse by waterfront of Lake Erie. After a disastrous crash landing with no ship to absorb the impact and no flight mode to speak of outside of her cobbled together makeshift rocket pack she'd used to propel herself from the Nemesis to Earth's atmosphere shortly before they burned out, there was little left of her but a charred shell and the barest flickering of a spark clinging to life.

Ratchet hadn't given her hopes, but trained as he was to be a medi-bot he felt compelled to treat her, allegiances aside. For over a month she lingered in a state of near-offlinement, cursing Starscream in her stasis locked delusions of dreams for abandoning her to her fate.

With their ship gone, the Autobots had no way to get in touch with the Elite Guard to retrieve their prisoner/patient and she suspected heated disagreements had ensued as a result. Though as it turned out, none of them had the fluid pump to render her offline. Instead they opted for Prime's benevolent suggestion: try and reform her. Autobot morals went against invasive reprogramming as it was, so when Maelstrom awaked she instead found herself the recipient of somewhat welcoming, somewhat skeptical and hostile treatment.

Slowly it sank in that Megatron was gone, as was Starscream. No great lose concerning the later as far as she was concerned, but according to her captors there was no trace of any of the other Decepticons for quite some time, leading her to believe she was the last one in this sector of the galaxy. And if that wasn't depressing enough, adaption to being first a hostage, then a timidly accepted member of the team almost shorted her circuits.

In her onlinement…her past life, as it were, she had been a loyal servant to the Decepticon armada. Not racking up to the insane levels of Lugnut, of course, but loyal enough. It was all she knew. That uncertain existence of servitude and silence with little to know guarantees she wouldn't step on the wrong pede and wake up in the scrap heap one day. She was by nature a quiet bot, only given to rare outbursts of frustration or glee around the few she timidly considered comrades. Friendship was a foreign concept.

As such, Bumblebee was as much a shock to her systems as the jumpstart from the medi-bot's cables which had kept her online for her first critic weeks on Earth. His scathing jabs while she was confined to one room in the plant she could understand, but as he and others gradually warmed to her, his in-jokes, nudges and general behavior like the equivalent of a hyper-active little brother befuddled her.

Of all the Autobots, the one whom she most connected with was the one who did not push her, who reached out to her in a quiet, accepting manner as if he had all the time in the universe to await her response. Prowl.

Maybe that was why she had put so much forethought into this event. It was the first Activation Day celebration she had planned since…

Her optics darkened and her head fall forward softly to rest against the tank's wall. There were days she wished she could wipe her memory clean and start over. Just so she wouldn't have to think about _him_, offline, rusting at the bottom of the lake with fish and crustaceans building a comfortable dwelling in the rusting hole of his empty spark chamber.

Confiding as much in her Autobot keepers was out of the question, no matter that they had given her an increasing amount of their trust, allowed her to wander from the plant without a full armored guard. Being the introvert she was and used to being crammed down in a darkened section of the Nemesis out of sight other than when ordered out, the culture shock was quite literally that. Humans amassed around her pedes and made her optics shutter with flashes of their insistent cameras and cell phones. The first time this happened she uttered a high-pitched feedback of terror and burned rubber back to the plant. Prowl found her curled up in something near fetal position between the boughs of the tree in his room, using the foliage to mask her presence like a security blanket. It took three solar cycles to coax her down.

After labeling a diagnosis on the femme bot of moderate agoraphobia, he set to gradually weaning her out of her metaphoric shell with protoform steps of progression. Mostly they ventured out on uncrowded backstreets in vehicle mode, often silent, with sparse but pleasant conversations that peaked her curiosity then shared fascination in organic lifeforms. She felt indebted to him and today's events seemed like the perfect opportunity to repay that dept.

A soft thrumming, a low vibration that traveled through the glass to her chasse and the core of her spark alerted her that the orca was close again and emitting curious echolocation waves, reading not only her structural layout but her emotions as well in theory. Sources in numerous tomes she had read during her house-arrest phase suggested dolphins could sense depression.

Depression and pessimism. Two other traits that a Human psychiatrist could have likely attributed to her. She was ten gigabytes of negative emotion on a two gig hard drive, so to speak. And while the Autobots tolerated her well, they failed to fill the empty place inside her. Maybe she was only slow to adjust, or more likely she was just coming the realization that no one would ever take_ his_ place…

*~*

_**55 Stellar Cycles Ago…**_

_"This is rapidly becoming annoying…"_

_Maelstrom was commenting in regards to her attempted surprise celebration for Blitzwing's 505th Activation Day. Everything had cone rather wretchedly wrong from the beginning. Naturally Megatron and Starscream refused to attend…fine, admittedly she hadn't even dared approach Megatron about it. There was no point in inviting Lugnut because he all but saw it as an insult to celebrate anything that wasn't centered on Megatron's greatness was some subtle form of treachery. Sadly Barricade and Frenzy had been transferred to another vessel in the fleet. No surprise they'd taken the promotion. Which left only two bots in the limited range of woefully small contact circle. You didn't invite a bounty hunter anywhere unless you were willing to pay exorbitant prices for his company. As for the other…_

_She had to contact him anyway. When one lives on an exiled battle fleet ship pit stops and shopping trips are extremely limited to once every hundred or five hundred stellar cycles. If you need basic supplies badly enough you run down a small space cruiser, pirate what you need, and destroy the evidence. The only exception being a limited number of dealers whose frequencies are readily available. And only one Megatron would trust to come directly to the ship._

_Maelstrom disliked using the communications system. Not only did it mean leaving her comfortable (at least, livable) quarters, the underworld of the Nemesis, under the feet of the rest of the crew in a jungle of pipes, wiring, and outlets, risking the wrath of the bigger Decepticons, but simply using that particular equipment made her nervous. Especially after she located the desired frequency and was overwhelmed by the large squarish face, violet optics, and booming vocals of the bot that answered._

_"Maelstrom! How ya doing, doll-face?"_

_She felt the outer corner of her left optic twitch. She resisted the urge to turn off the communicator and simply walk away. It wasn't that she disliked Swindle in so many words. He just overwhelmed her. She felt a rectus forced smile lock into place on her face plate._

_"Better than ever, Swindle…"_

_"What can I do ya for, Sweetheart?"_

_Pit, she hated the cutsie nicknames. They created the irrational urge to try and reach through the screen and throttle the arms dealer._

_"I was looking for…"_

_"Component for the tractor beam again? Boy, are you one lucky little femme, I just got in a fresh supply of…"_

_"No, that's working fine. Actually I needed something of more of a personal nature…sort of."She groaned mentally as his look of interest increased significantly. And hurried on, "its Blitzwing's Activation Day and I wanted to get him something…"_

_"And you chose to shop from me? I'm so touched!" He positively gushed fake sentiment before rushing on, "What did you have in mind for old Blitzy? A plasma cannon, mayhaps? Oh, maybe a gatling gun or a…"_

_Before he could rattle off his wears she held up both servos, "High powered ammo may not be the very best option. I'm on a budget."_

_His overly cheerful façade faltered for a bare click before he recovered, "Well what did you have in mind, Sweetness?"_

_She had to take into consideration all his personalities, which made it more difficult. "Something practical…"_

_"That I have."_

_"Possible something destructive."_

_"That I have LOTS of!"_

_"…and…something a little whimsical."_

_"…now you've lost me. Not to worry though, I aim to please and I like a challenge. You're stationed in the Bastian Sector, right? I'll just zip on over there and dock up and you, my dear, can have yourself a look at my stock!"_

_"Looking...forward to it," she said as sincerely as possible. If Megatron or anyone else asked she'd simply say that she was replacing components and wiring burn out on the hyper drive's back up system. It was a common enough occurrence that she needed something of the sort from Swindle._

_Five mega-cycles later the two ships were synced up and she boarded Swindle's much smaller vessel and followed the rambling dealer bot to the hold where he showcased his stock. After another two-mega cycles Swindle's enthusiasm had become considerably more strained. Surprisingly, she liked him better this way. He'd ceased with the insufferably cutsie names and gotten down to business._

_So placate him she attempted idle small talk concerning his recent upgrades, something he was always ready to boast about. After all, if he was in too foul a mood any transaction would become that much more difficult._

_"I picked up this Negatronic force field emitter in an arms deal with the Vok of Nexus Zero. Nice creatures, the Vok. If you're ever in the Nexus Zero area…well, I don't suppose you get over that way much…"_

_"Not really," she admitted turning a refittable shoulder cannon which was vaguely the right color of her chassis but a few sizes too large for her frame over, "Did you pick up anything else of interest from the Vok?"_

_"Oh, this and that, but all of the good stuff is gone. Just little bits in the scraps pile." He gestured to a darkened far corner. For some strangle reason a glimmer in the pile caught her optic and she moved over in that direction, locating the source. It was small, almost tiny and well tarnished._

_The object in question was an antique hunter-case pocket watch. A spring-hinged circular metal cover set at the 9'oclock position closed over the watch-dial and crystal, protecting them from dust, scratches and other damage or debris. The casing was old black hills gold, held on a T-bar and twin length chains, one which was occupied with the pieces watch-key used to wind and set the time. Inside the cover was a small compartment for a photo, similar to a keepsake locket._

_Although she initially didn't understand the purpose of the device and it seemed ludicrously delicate, a short scan of its inner workings mapped out a design involving small red gemstones which were inserted into areas of high-level motion, preventing wear of parts and allowing the device to operate that much more smoothly. Although she was unfamiliar with the roman numeral markings she deduced the device was to tell time, though it operated on a different system then their own, having only 12 megacycle markings instead of 18._

_"Earth junk. The Vok collect it like crazy then practically give it away when they have too much. Pretty worthless…"_

_"How much?" She asked._

_His entire demeanor altered like a light going on. "Well for a piece of this high level craftsmanship…"_

_"You just said it was worthless," she countered, cocking an optic arch and making him squirm._

_"Well yes but…you understand I can't just give things away. I have my reputation to consider, Doll. Besides with the expense of fuel and the added mileage just to come out this way…"_

_"125 Credits."_

_"150 ."_

_"130."_

_"140."_

_"Sold…" He mumbled unhappily but brightened slightly when she transferred over 200 credits from her decidedly small personal account to reimburse him partially for his time and effort. After all, she did want to keep on good terms with him. It was a pitifully small transaction compared to what he was sued to but he managed to be pleasant long enough to see her back to the Nemesis before hightailing it back into space in search of more profitable ventures._

_Gift acquired, Maelstrom set to polishing it with as much care as she could. She came to the conclusion that locket portion was for holding a printout. How outdated. Earth must be positively primitive to still be using printouts as adverse to holo imagery. All the same it was easy enough to acquire a print out, though far harder to place it in the watch. She kept feeling she was going to break the hinges._

_Having no wrapping paper or any equivalent to speak of she turned to decorations. One of the engine rooms was large and seemed and ideal location at the time so she rigged a series of small crackling fireworks and sparkling streamers to explode and light up the room when the birthday bot entered. This was how she learned the hard way that you did not try to surprise Blitzwing._

_Upon his arrival Hothead immediately took control and opened fire, scorching decorations and overhead wiring alike to melting heaps of slag, and nearly Maelstrom herself. Apparently he took the tiny explosions to mean they were under attack if **"DIE AUTOBOT SCUM!!!"** was any indication to go by._

_After finally getting him claimed down and assured that no Autobots had invaded the Nemesis they spent the majority of the day replacing what he'd damaged._

_"I already apologized, stop beating ze dead spark plug," Hothead grossed then his face spun around to the darkened jack-o-lantern vintage of Random. "Besides, mein fireworks were much bigger!"_

_"Can't argue with that..." she replied muffledly, her small dark form wedged up in a vent, standing on his shoulders. Thankfully, being a rather small Decepticon, the smallest of the Nemesis's crew, she was also decidedly light._

_Her delicate servo digits were just the right size for manipulating small wires and such making her a born technician and not a half bad progressing medi-bot for the crew. Like it or not even Megatron had to admit a certain rationality in having one non-combat bot aboard to tend to little glitches such as this. Besides, Maelstrom mostly kept to the lower bowels of the ship and the only signs of her presence in over 100 stellar cycles on board was the continued smooth function of the ancient war vessel._

_"Would have been nice to give you your present BEFORE you melted it though," she remarked, half teasing._

_From the shifting sound below her, though not visible, she sensed his faces, and personalities, had switched again. "That vas quite unnecessary in any case."_

_Icy it was. Technically he was the sanest of the three. "I didn't do it because it was necessary, I did it because I wanted to…" She finished tying off the last stripped wire. Done. She slide back in the shaft then abruptly stopped. Pushed forward, back. No give. Oh. No. This was far too humiliating. "Blitz…I appear to be stuck..."_

_"Vhat??"_

_"I'm STUCK!" she snapped, resisting the urge to kick her pedes uselessly in the air. Not only would it do little good but on top of looking completely undignified she might land a kick in the much larger triple changer's faceplate. All things considered, she didn't want him going Hothead and melting her lower body to slag._

_There was a long pause...then a snicker, which quickly progressed to a full out and out cackle of varying degrees. It took a click for her to realize this unsightly predicament had struck her fellow Decepticon as hilarious enough to cause multiple face shifts and every one of his personalities were laughing at her. Even Icy. Which was particularly noteworthy since in all the time she'd known him had NEVER happened before._

_"Will you just pull me out…" she sighed, sounding resigned._

_"Vill do!" Random's unstable giggle reached her. She had the unsettling feeling that if her chassis was too firmly wedged and he jerked so hard that he ripped her in half he'd only find it more amusing. Some bots misjudged Random as having a childlike intellect but if that were true it only made him all the more dangerous in some situations._

_She grimaced then shuttered her optics off as she felt large hands lock around her legs at the knee joint and pull. At first the strain on her wires really DID feel like she was going to end up halved then her chassis squealed, scraped, and slid free at an alarming rate so quickly Blitzwing had no time to compensate for the over balance and both of them crashed to the floor._

_A click later when she recovered she found one rather embarrassing position had been traded for another. To put it bluntly she was now straddling Blitzwing's waist, one knee on either side, her hands propped against his chest plating._

_At the same instant he seemed to realize their unlikely situation and the reaction was a spinning blur of multiple faces before he finally settled on Icy, whose long blue vintage had a pinkish hue she couldn't recall ever seeing before. Further shocking, he seemed speechless. Three firsts in one day._

_Not that she was much better equipped to deal with the situation. Her systems grew decidedly hotter despite the fact her filtration unit was running just fine. "Um…" Nothing could possibly make this more embarrassing,"Nice catch."_

_"Danke."_

_The spell of silence broken she scrambled up onto her stabilizing servos at the same time he rose to his feet far more gracefully. Icy always seemed to embody grace and purpose._

_"I should…I routine checks to do on the hyper drive," she mumbled, making her escape for the darker bowels of the ship._

_"Frauline?"_

_She paused midstep. Only Icy called her that. For some reason it always made her feel…tingly. She turned her head, "Yes?"_

_"Danke. For ze party."_

_She smiled faintly and rolled her shoulders in a shrug, "Sure, what are friends for, right?"_

_Since she vanished down the corridor so quickly she did not see the slight smile that flickered across his face plate, nor when he bent down and ran his digits through the charred pile of decorations on the floor and retrieved the burnt but still functioning watch. The hinge was ajar, and the printout inside was slightly singed and curled at the edges but still recognizably from a rare scan of the two of them. He tucked it away in his subspace compartment and left_

~*~

Prowl watched her in silent observation. A mere pane of glass separated them from the ocean's most feared predators in this walk-through tunnel aquarium teeming with sharks. Over seven shark species, to be exact, with a number of gliding graceful stingrays. Bumblebee and Sari had gone off to investigate the V2: Vertical Velocity, a roller coaster which claimed to hit speeds of up to 70mph in less than four seconds, leaving Maelstrom and himself alone.

After checking out a dolphin show at Merlin's Dolphin Harbor, which seemed to captivate the former Decepticon so that she even forgot they were surrounded by teeming masses for a moment (Prowl and Maelstrom had even been allowed to circle up onto the stage and the delighted femme bot got a kiss from each of the four Atlantic bottlenose dolphins, Bella, Mattie, Merlin and Liberty) they had visited the Walrus Experience then moved on to the Shark Experience.

Now in the somewhat cramped but peaceful tunnels, both crouched so their heads didn't bump the ceiling, the ninjabot had the opportunity to admire how far his new friend had come. Certainly, she was much more sociable than any Decepticon he'd ever met. And her attempt to surprise him with this trip had been…sweet. Granted, he preferred to see organic life forms in their own natural environment and had distaste for crowds but the thought was what counted.

When they had first met he felt uncertain of her, not only because of her allegiance but because her aura was almost…shattered, full of tension waves and neurotic vibes. As he got to know here he realized that with her past one could expect little else and began to work on nurturing the spark inside her. Today was a marvelous breakthrough in that regard.

Maelstrom felt optics on her and turned her head quickly enough to catch Prowl's little half smile, her silver face plate tinted aqua by the reflections from the tank, "What?"

"Nothing…just, thank you for today."

She smiled back, her lavender optics glowing softly in the shadowy corridor. In that moment the trip was no longer simply because she owed him for his help. She owed him far more for his friendship. "Well don't get used to it. I have a reputation to maintain as being a sparkles glitch." Her smile twisted into a playful smirk and he chuckled.

It felt nice to share a moment like this. If only she could focus on it and keep her processor from staying to the past. If only.

***

**Author's Notes: School has been taking it's toll on me. As such I wanted to write some drabbles to relax a little and try my hand at it. So thus I centered in on my two favorite character from Transformers Animated, Prowl and Blitzwing. No I'm not slashing them...although...that would be interesting..anyway. Yes, there is an OC heavily involved, she is mine, and she is obviously a femme bot. Please don't judge my writing just based off that. I think I'm developing her rather nicely. I will explain why she didn't arrive with the rest of the Decepticons in a later drabble if this one gets some decent reviews. Please review? Onyx/Shelley lives off reviews! No, I kid, but seriously a lot of my ideas come from people saying "Oh this would be cool" or "I can see this happening". It helps. If you're wondering about the title, it's German for "The Only Beautiful Thing", which I instantly loved because in Blitzwing's nutty way of thinking Maelstrom is "The Only Beautiful Thing" in existence. Nice, no?**


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